Street Tough
by Twilight Antediluvian
Summary: M-rated for safety, but probably T. Draco Malfoy, seven years after the war. How do you escape, if a whole world is out to get you? Nonromantic.


_**Street Tough**_

a Draco Malfoy Story

The War had ended. Well, for most... badly, for some.

In the fire and inquisition that had followed, no place was safe. No place, that was, where they'd expect him to go.

Being raised to always assume the world would fall to his feet, he had nonetheless been taught by harsh reality that sometimes people wished him ill. In the dark hours of the night, lying sleepless as he hedged the realm of nightmares, he pondered what he might do if everything went to hell.

He would never have admitted it. Not out loud, that would've been too dangerous... but he _thought_ it, and maybe that saved him, in the end.

"Hey, bum, move it."

Some wannabee, there were lost of them. They just wanted to feel strong. He didn't need that kind of thing anymore, so he shuffled wordlessly to the side, further into shadow.

He had money, still. There had been part of him, that took his nighttime worries seriously. He wished he'd taken them even more seriously, but at least he wasn't hungry, like most of the shady lowlifes he shared a street with.

Not that they knew. Waving greed in their face was stupid. He might've been on the wrong side, but not because he was stupid.

The odds had been stacked clearly against... oh, who was he trying to kid? There was no one left to impress, he could acknowledge that it had been idiotic, but he'd done it for Father. That had been enough, while either of his parents were still alive.

Didn't seem so brilliant now, but then... he didn't even know what he would do for a chance at getting them back. Maybe the same all over again.

Maybe more than his rational mind cared to admit.

There was a wordless scream down the street. There were a lot of bad stuff in this area of town, or so he'd understood. Muggle towns seemed infested with a darkness that even Voldemort would have shied from. Not because of its brutality, oh no, he would've been right in there with them if it was just that.

No, it was all about the randomness. The uncollared barbarism, like mad dogs and not men.

Ears and eyes firmly shut, as always when such things were happening on his doorstep, so to speak. Or at least eyes. His ears kept trying to ignore the noise, but it kept digging up memories.

Darkness, Death Masks and Revels.

It was the same, except the Revels had always been well organised, thoroughly planned. Once upon a time, the noise had made him feel powerful. Now... he forced himself to admit it made him want to throw up.

And his eyes stayed firmly shut, ignoring the world as if it would go away. At least, that way, he wouldn't lose the only thing he had left. His life meant more now, when losing it was less of a theoretical concept and more close-up reality.

The wordless, pleading noises were closer now. He could ignore the lusty voice of the rapist, it flowed over him like water over a rock. It didn't sink in.

Her voice wasn't so easy. The desperation cut through him like ice spikes.

There was no telling how long he'd been in hiding like this. The winters were mild enough to allow for decent living even in the street.

He'd had been no reason to keep count after the first birthday. What little celebration he afforded himself had left behind nothing except a heavy depression. He hadn't attempted any such thing again. The days kept coming, and if he had to guess he'd say five years, but they kept jumbling together and making no sense.

Nothing made sense anymore...

A hard-soft object hit him simultaneously in the chest and thigh with a sobbing cry, causing him to grunt. A shoulder. A person. Scared dark brown eyes turned reddish at the corners by tears and fear. Eyes that, for some unfathomably stupid reason, reminded him of Mother.

"Look," said the man's voice that washed over him from afar, ever unrecorded by his mind, "these people won't save you. One beggar's much the same as any other."

The dark eyes fill up with pain again, and lips that he only now realises come with a face belonging to a living being so close as he hasn't had a living being … well, since _then_ upon a time, whenever that was...

She whimpers at the pain as her head is forced up to his face, so close that he notices her erratic breathing. Mostly through her nose, as if her mouth refuses to let air slip through.

"These people," brags the voice that is only slowly starting to register, "they know no one will miss them if they just disappear into a drain one day. Hell, if I had you and then left him the spoils, he'd probably do you, too!"

He recognised that kind of a voice. Not the voice itself, he'd never seen the man before. Only the situation itself made his eyes dart, not once but twice, past the dark brown locks of fussed-up hair to the uninteresting man behind.

The man with an insane glimpse in his eyes.

This kind of person was not someone you wanted to mess with. He had Voldemort-quality hubris-madness. Conqueror syndrome, or whatever you wanted to call it. Got off on power.

And then the eyes he was staring into are gone. Ripped away with another sob, another whimper, another memory added to the life he no longer truly _lives_.

He realises too late that an old, and in this situation very dangerous, habit has resurfaced.

Pride. There's no room for that on the street. He can't strive to live for more than survival.

Yet there the feeling is again. The anger at having his hand forced. The furious question that used to roar in his brain until he silenced it with necessity:

- is this enough? -

Could it actually be enough? In reality? To merely survive, for no good reason? Mother's eyes darted here and there as she still tried to escape, despite having all the routes to freedom cut off. The stranger's voice that slipped through bruised lips pleaded words that went unheard, but the tone made itself clear.

"It's not enough." Even as he said it, he could not believe it. The surprise was evident in the tone as much as anything.

And the world froze, as if captivated by this simple truthlike confession. If, indeed, it was the truth. He had managed to counter it for so long, that he wasn't sure anymore. Nevertheless... for now, it would have to do.

Mother's eyes would never leave him be, if he didn't.

Not bothering to rise, all drama flair humiliated out of him long ago, the hands that had unwittingly gripped his wand to the breaking point made use of a swish-and-flick as if they hadn't been waiting forever to remember.

A crash later, the man lies stunned and groaning by the opposite wall.

The world moves in slow motion as legs that have been inactive for too long stretch as quickly as they can. Formerly nimble limbs stagger to upright position, leaning on the wall.

"Get out of here before he gets back on his feet. And hope that he was too full of himself to really notice what either of us looked like."

Then, as his head is still swimming a little from the sudden change in blood pressure, an arm is slipped behind his back and a hoarse voice comforts him with strange words.

"You don't speak my language," he concludes with an odd surprise. Such a possibility never occurred to him.

"_Reparo_. _Obliviate. Obliviate._"

Two quick lights flashs by his side and the woman stops, her arm losing its grip and falling. He nearly stumbles as the support gives way. For too long moments, he just stares at her blank eyes as her brain erases everything.

His own concludes the chapter with terrible chill. The events that must now come into play make themselves clear with precise rationale. Of course that, too, has been part of his nightmares. Part of what kept him underground, magicless, for so long. The unfathomable fear of What Happens Then. The knowledge that the Wizarding World, once it has found its scapegoat, will not relinquish him to anything other than maximum security life sentence.

At least in magicless Muggle Land, he's been free.

Fighting isn't an option, despite how desperately his mind calls for action. He must appear unknowing and scared witless... one of which is actually true, he admits. Then he must pray, to some powerful being that has already abandoned him, that whoever caught him only knows him by reputation and photo. Then, and only then, does his raggedy Muggle appearance and unwashed hair have a chance to fool them.

"London suburbs disturbance is under control," says a vaguely familliar voice, clear but quiet. "No need for backup, subject has fled the scene. Dealing with very minor cleanup."

Still afraid to act as anything other than what he is posing as, he picks up the arm of the strange girl. She has a blue ribbon on her chest, he notices. _Reparo_, his mind echoes and he must take care not to nod to himself.

She looks at him with surprise as he slips an arm behind her back.

"Don't worry," his cracked voice mumbles. "You hit your head while helping me. You were out for a while, there."

Her stranger's voice answers something in the language he doesn't understand, but her eyes speak of guarded trust. She supports him once again and he sighs with a sort of relief born from many things at once.

A wind sweeps past him as he makes his way out into the still-dark pre-dawn.

Soon they split up, feeling an uneasy mixture of relief to be free from an unexpected stranger with possibly too many strings attached and sadness at seeing an odd new acquaintance leave. He insists, of course, that he will not impose. That he feels most at home in the streets. Truly, charity disgusts him most when it is directed his way.

She doesn't understand his words, but he still has his convincing manners. After some worry and a few attempts at bonding, she lets him go.

Of course, he could've stayed with her, his mind suggests. Quickly, the venom of his realism's reply spreads through his veins. Of course, no. Of course, he would always be a burden... and she would not even know why her eyes were the only things that made him stay.

Why she would never be herself in his eyes, whatever language she spoke.

So _he_ leaves _her_, rather than the opposite. She watches him go. He can feel her eyes on his back and it makes him shamelessly relieved yet again as he turns a corner and is out of sight.

A grunt, or a rough sigh, accompanies a hunching of his shoulders and shoving of his hands into the pockets of the scruffy-looking but warm and comfortable winter coat.

Hands fiddling with the ripping seams of the pockets notice an unfamilliar crunching-crackling kind of feeling. As he pulls the piece out, he realises that's another thing that has been too long since. Paper doesn't even feel like paper anymore. But how did it get there?

And even stranger is the message. He stares at it, then starts and looks around. For a few moments, he is guarded, before he realises the significance. The significance that despite the threat inherent in the message, in the fact that such a message even exists, he is still safe.

Then he smiles. Finally, despite all that's happened, maybe he can feel a little safe.

It's not someone he'd have assumed to be an ally. Neither is it someone he would have picked, once upon a time... but as interfering people say: "Beggars can't be choosers".

Maybe this year would be better than the last one. At least now, he knew which year it _was_. And as such, the little note was folded neatly and pushed back into the relative safety of the crummy pocket.

_Hey, we should hook up for a beer or something when your 25th birthday comes around. It's on the 5th, isn't it?_

And then, in typewriter-lettering below:

_Muggle Incidents Supervisor_

_Death Eater Consultant for the Department of Peace_

_ Hermione Granger_

Seven or eight years. That was a long time to be in the darkness. A long time to not celebrate one's birthday. Maybe it was time for a change.

Maybe he could both live and survive, without sacrificing one for the other.

If anything, the hope itself was worth the trouble.


End file.
